Are you satisfied with the offseason (so far)

[DallasMaverick]

One of the things about the draft that hit me this year was how player evaluations that front offices make are only the starting point of their job. Another huge variable is the evaluations of other teams’ rosters, needs, and opinions of draftable players.

It’s not just about evaluating players in the draft. It’s about understanding all the little micro-markets contained within the draft.

To trade down from #10 to 12, the Mavs needed to understand picks #10 and #11, and be confident that neither team would take him. So they needed to know that both teams had their eye on a different player, either because they were drafting for need, and didn’t need a center, or were drafting the best available and had someone else ranked higher.

Same thing with the pick at 24. They had to have a really good idea of which teams were likely to pick OMax (in this case Boston, apparently, although there could have been others), and which picks were available (Sac was anxious to move off Holmes’ money).

So, a ginormous part of a GM’s job is studying other team’s rosters, knowing their coaches’ biases and preferred style of play, watching how playing time is allocated, maybe even doing a little psycho-analysis of how specific players respond to their roles, or the personalities of coach and teammates.

Reading posters on this board has given me an appreciation for the wild emotional swings that people can have on a given player in a very small amount of time. Stuff like “I’d happily give up our ‘27 first round pick just to never see player X on this team again”. I’m sure the same thing can happen ( to a lesser degree, of course) at the coach and GM level.